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Volleyball Hall HOLYOKE, Mass. >> The Volleyball Hall of Fame has come a long way since it was first set up in the bathroom of a Holyoke museum.
of Fame is a hit
The latest incarnation of the
sport's shrine serves notice on
the game's proliferation
By Adam Gorlick
Associated Press
Now sharing space with a popular children's museum, the shrine boasts an extensive history, trophies and uniforms from the sport invented in this western Massachusetts city for out-of-shape men who thought basketball was too violent.
The 44 names inducted into the Hall of Fame may be unfamiliar to the average American sports fan, but a chat with curator Ruth McCormick and a glance at some of the photos featured in the gallery turn up some more well-known personalities.
Take actor Tom Selleck, for instance.
The "Magnum P.I." star took up volleyball in Hawaii to kill time during an actors strike that broke out just before he started filming the television show. He went on to be the honorary captain of the men's 1984 Olympic volleyball team.
A huge photo reproduction of the ball he signed with the team members hangs in the Hall of Fame, just beyond a half-size volleyball court. The actual ball is archived in another building, along with about 100 other balls from historic matches and bearing important signatures.
Hawaii at the Hall
Three Hawaii men are inductees in the Volleyball Hall of Fame: the late Thomas Haine, Jon Stanley and Pete Velasco.
Also, Dietre Collins, who played at the University of Hawaii, was a member of the 1988 women's Olympic team and, as such, is a member of the court of honor.
But Selleck himself has been spiked as a Hall of Famer.
"Sure he's famous, but he's not that good of a volleyball player," McCormick says.
Certainly not as good as the late basketball star Wilt Chamberlain, who took up beach volleyball to rehabilitate a basketball injury in 1971.
"The sand gave him a soft landing, but it strengthened his legs because it's hard to jump out of," McCormick says.
Invented by William Morgan at the Holyoke YMCA in 1895, volleyball seemed like the perfect sport for the town's mill workers who wanted an activity they could play indoors to escape the harsh New England winters. A year later, Morgan turned the game's rule book over to what is now Springfield College. But that city never took to the sport the way it did to its own creation, basketball.
The idea for a Hall of Fame came in 1968 as two local men started thinking about volleyball's 75th birthday. By 1979 the nonprofit Volleyball Hall of Fame held its grand opening in a cornered-off section in the bathroom of the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke.
After the U.S. men's team won the 1984 Olympics, the Hall of Fame was moved into a more respectable location in City Hall. And with about $300,000 in cash and services from the city, the shrine finally moved into its current location -- a former clothing store behind City Hall -- in 1987.
The Hall of Fame is in the same building as the Children's Museum but only gets about 10,000 visitors a year. Still, its directors want to relocate to an even larger space in Holyoke that will include more exhibits from the archives, a theater and an interactive display room.
"Our major issue is that we're so small, we're only known by real fans of the sport," says Alex Stetynski, the hall's director of development. "But we try to make it interesting and fun to people who don't know anything about volleyball."